Personal relationships with deities

[robvalue]

It appears you're talking about God like it has severe problems which stop it being able to communicate effectively, for which we should make allowances.

I believe each of us is born with that personal relationship. But I have few problems with your "points".

Born with a relationship? What does that mean? That sounds like involuntary conscription to something, not a relationship.

1) Both parties in the relationship exist, and are easily distinguishable from being imaginary.

Being imaginary, is up to how much knowledge you have. A person from the stone age would laugh at you for ages if you told him that there are "little men called viruses" that infect his body.
So imaginary or not is up to how big your mind can actually extend. Denying the existence of black holes, never proved that black holes don't exist.

Yes, knowledge changes. But we don't call something knowledge until there is adequate evidence that such a thing is real. So I don't know what your point is here. Are you claiming to have more knowledge than us, thus putting us in the "cave man" category? If not, what's the point of such a comparison? Speculating on what may or may not become knowledge is pointless, as this puts every belief on equal footing just because it "might turn out to be true".

Anyhow, No other problems here; moving on.

3) Both parties directly communicate with the other party in a meaningful, observable way.

In this way, I can have personal relationship with any human, any animal that has some way to at least acknowledge my interaction with it, and arguably with an artificial intelligence. It seems to me that if these 3 criteria are not met, it is not a meaningful personal relationship. The only exception I can think of is where one party becomes unable to communicate at some point, such as a friend going into a coma. You could maybe argue that you can continue to have a personal relationship with them, based on your history together, even though they can't directly answer back.

I have a big problem here. What if the opposing side is communication through a language you can't actually get ?

Well, that means the opposing side is failing to communicate effectively, due to a lack of common understanding. Since we're talking about deities, I would expect that they would know exactly what language to use if they actually wanted to communicate. You seem to be suggesting they choose to pick a language that they know some people won't be able to interpret. That's not them trying to have a relationship with us all, that's sending out coded messages to the "elite" who they decided beforehand would be able to read them.

Keeping it short; God communicates with us daily, through natural phenomena. That sweet sunshine, the pretty moonlight, a windy day carrying warm breeze, didn't you hear the voice near the sea ?

Unsupported assertion. This isn't an argument. You're just arbitrarily assigning agency to things around you. Humans are pattern seekers, so much so that we try and force things to fit a pattern, even where there is none. That is a far simpler explanation.

Away from all of that, pray and that's your part of the conversation now; good acts too are a good way to communicate. If you demands a direct reply, then your mind didn't understand yet that it doesn't communicate with a deity different than humans..

So a deity can't, or won't, reply to me in a way I can understand, within a reasonable time frame, like humans can? How is this different from talking to no-one, and then randomly interpreting things in the future as being the return of communication? Just because you say you're talking to something, it doesn't mean that thing actually exists or is hearing you.

Even with animals you can't get a direct response all the time.

I'm not asking for a direct response all the time. Just a reasonable amount of the time; at least some of the time. I've never had a direct response from "god", or indeed any response at all. I just get people pointing to random things and saying, "That was the response". I can have relationships with many animals. We can communicate through touch, and by what we do visually for each other.

So, yep..

Check the cherry blossom

Or maybe the stars ?

I don't know what this means. If you decide beforehand that you are receiving messages from god, then you're going to interpret whatever random stuff as messages from god. The problem is, this works for anything. I can convince myself I'm talking to my dead relative, or a being in another dimension, or even my spoon if I am willing to just point at stuff that happens later and say, "The spoon did that". That's not what I would call a meaningful relationship. I don't think you would either, if we were talking about anything other than religion. Why is god so bad at relationships? I'd expect him to be the best at them, not the worst. God is clearly being deliberately difficult to interpret. If we're not clever enough to interpret him properly, then he's pretty stupid for making creatures for which to have a relationship which are not properly equipped to do so. That's like me building a robot with no auditory senses and then sitting there talking to it. What the fuck?